For young children, the parent-child relationship serves as the preeminent context in which to achieve socialization and through which children learn to synthesize the affect, cognition, and behavior needed for positive school adaptation (Bornstein, 1995; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990). However, research on the link between parenting and child outcomes often has compared the parenting styles of White middle-class parents and ethnic minority low-income parents, depicting the parenting styles of the latter group as deficient (e.g., comparatively more authoritarian, parent-centered, and disorganized), and suggesting that these deficient parenting behaviors are associated with substandard academic and social outcomes among low-income, minority children (Baumrind, 1972; Berlin, Dornbush, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987; Spencer, 1990). The almost ubiquitous focus on deficiency suggests the need for the development of measures of parenting competence that reflect the goals and perspectives of low-income, African American parents, and that do not assume the validity of traditionally employed constructs for this group (Rogers, 1998). This two-year, multi-method study has a single overarching objective: to produce two culturally grounded, parent-derived measures of parenting competence that are relevant for research involving low-income, urban African American parents of preschool children. In addition to its exclusive focus on within-group study, the strength of the proposed project is its integration of qualitative and quantitative research methods. This study employs a community-based, partnership-directed perspective (Fantuzzo, McWayne, & Childs, 2005; Gaskins, 1994) in the effort to ensure that participating families will play central roles in the development of items and heuristics for the paper-and-pencil and observational measures of parenting competence. The proposed study has clear relevance for public health; the knowledge gained from this study has the potential to inform the design of culturally responsive family involvement programs to enhance positive parenting and child development within New York City's Child Care and Head Start systems. Further, we anticipate that any findings will have implications for early childhood programs serving low-income, African American families and children across our nation. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]